Being Heroes
by AlienZombies
Summary: [SLASH] The greatest of wounds can sometimes be healed by a broken rib. Every hero needs to be saved, sometimes. [oneshot]


**Being Heroes**

_SLASH The greatest of wounds can sometimes be healed by a broken rib. Every hero needs to be saved, sometimes. oneshot_

**Rated PG13 **– Two f-bombs, blood, very mild references to sex

**Disclaimer: **Please tell me you don't think I own Fable. Thanks.

**Being Heroes**

He doesn't look like a hero.

I know it's a terrible first thing to think – but really, it's true. From the way everyone else stares, they're all thinking the same thing. This couldn't possibly be the boy who had taken down twelve bandits with only his fists and a pair of trader's moccasins, the boy who had walked the forests of Darkwood, unguided, and lived. This boy looks as though he could barely climb a flight of stairs without fainting, and that only with a hefty bite of bread, or two.

He pauses there, now, in the tavern doorway, wavering uneasily, his eyes fluttering closed. He's traveled a long way, I know. The last report of him was all the way in Bowerstone, two weeks ago. And as he staggers inside, his hands leave long red streaks on the doorframe, on the edge of a table, on the arm of a passing waitress who looks down upon herself and screams that she's been murdered.

As he turns away from me I see blood dripping down from the back of his head, and swelling up from a deep half-moon cut in his back, deep enough to flex with every breath. He leans against the wall, kisses it as his forehead collides with the unforgiving wood, and then he slides to the floor and sits there. He looks around at all of us, watching him, and offers a feeble smile. The inside of his mouth is stained red.

"Sorry," he says. "I think I bled a little on the floor." His voice is soft and sweet, tinged with the flaky remains of his childhood heritage, the same ringing rural tone heard in this same town. He's a small-town farm boy, like the rest of us, though he may not act it. That voice reflects all of who he is, and that voice is not that of a hero at all.

The waitress kneels weakly on the floor, holding her bloodstained arm away from her, as though in offense. Quietly, a man whispers to his wife, "Is that him? Is _that_ the man we expect to save us?"

The boy on the floor responds by coughing up a nice, fat bubble of blood that bursts on his lips, dotting his face with flecks of crimson. He laughs uncertainly in the back of his throat, but his eyes are wide in alarm. "Think I busted a rib," he mumbles, then shoves his head between his knees and vomits up a pool of blood in the space between his feet.

A woman screams, knocking over a drink. The bartender and the schoolteacher's assistant both come up behind the boy, the 'Hero', and heave him to his feet.

"Let's get you upstairs, lad," grunts the bartender, scooping the boy up in his arms like a baby. "I won't charge you for tonight."

The boy isn't entirely there, but for some reason, something, perhaps, pre-ordained by Avo himself, he looks at me from across the room, silently, totally, inexplicably – and he smiles at me, wiggling his fingers, though he's not at all charming as he steadily bleeds all over his cheap tunic and all over the poor fat bartender's arms.

I'm following them up the stairs before I can think. Softly, his eyes unfocused and gazing somewhere over my head, the boy says to me, "What's your name?"

As I open my mouth to respond, he passes away, lowering his head onto the bartender's shoulder and letting his eyes slide shut. The bartender lays him on the bed, strips him, and then leaves him. He doesn't say anything to me. I don't think he minds me so much, if he even noticed me at all.

Kneeling beside the boy, who really is only younger than me by two years, if not less, I whisper to him, "My name is Cyril. I hope you're better soon."

I move to stand, but a heavy, sleepy hand snakes out from somewhere and grips my sleeve. And so I stay, and I stay all the night, dozing only sometimes, with my face in my palm and his face in my eyes.

--

I wake alone, lying on my back on the bed the boy had been sleeping in before. As I sit I hear a low voice say sharply, "Stay. Move slowly."

He's crouching there in the corner, looking foreign and predatory, and the sweet, unarmed look on his face from the night before is replaced with a look of suspicion and dark, wolf-like perception. He's aware of me, and I'm aware of him, and suddenly I see how he became a hero. That look behind his eyes shows no mercy, no fear.

"Are you any better?" I ask, forcing myself to be calm. "You didn't look so well yesterday. Gave everyone quite a fright."

He nods slowly, but he's lying. I can tell.

He's naked, all but his underwear and one sock in a sad state of disrepair. A rich violet bruise is swelling up on his left side under his breast. It's very likely that he's broken a rib, maybe even punctured something. But it's nothing that I can't fix. Six years of medical training, two more of Will healing. A broken rib is minor.

"Your name is Cyril," he says to me, and then frowns. The animalistic look in his eyes has dulled a little. "I remember, but I don't know…"

"I told you, while you were sleeping."

"You watched me while I slept!" He sinks back on his haunches. "You… did you…" He peers at me suspiciously. "Did you touch me?"

I laugh. "I wish."

From behind him, he draws a dagger. It isn't much, but its purpose is clear as he points it at me. "Take me to a doctor," he tells me. "And I'll spare you."

"Are you kidding? Put that weapon down, before you hurt yourself. No reason to get all worked up over nothing. Besides." I wink at him. "I just so happen to be the doctor you're looking for."

"Hobb-stools. You're a liar." He wheezes suddenly and coughs violently into his hand, which comes back red, connected by a tiny string of bloody saliva to his lower lip.

"You don't have much longer to doubt me," I tell him. "I think your rib has punctured your lung."

"Take me to a doctor," he says again, angrily now. "I swear to Avo, I'll kill you!"

"Avo?"

"I'm not a bad guy, just sort of _dying_, asshole."

"Any reason you need to live?"

He frowns then, lowering his dagger. He turns his gaze away, and moves aside his feet, and I see where he's vomited earlier. Cooling blood forms a black puddle in the corner. "I did, once, I think."

"And what was that?"

He scowls. "That is none of your business."

"Perhaps not. I just want to calm you down. Put your weapon away. I'm unarmed."

"If you're a doctor as you say, where's your equipment?"

"Well, what have you got on you?"

He hesitates. "My weapons…"

"And?"

"A few apples, mostly. Some meat…"

"Any string?"

"No."

"Well, I suppose I could pull apart a sheet… Do you have any narcotics?"

"I'm not that kind of person."

"I just figured a hero like you needed something to relax once and a while."

He just looks at me, but now he's sitting splay-legged on the floor. His dagger falls to the floor with a clatter. I see scars lacing up the backs of his legs, broken up by a few fresh cuts that are scabbing over now.

His face is so pale, almost green. His eyes aren't focused anymore. He's staring at his hands. "I've got a blue mushroom in my pack. Don't give me the whole thing."

I get to my feet, and instantly his fist closes over the dagger at his side. He gives me a halfhearted glare.

"If you try to kill me, I'll snap your neck so quickly you won't know what hit you."

I smile at him, taking a bold step forward, though inside I feel weak. "I'll be careful, then."

So he lies back on the floor, wincing and bracing his chest with his hand. He doesn't need the blue mushroom; he passes out almost instantly.

I kneel beside him, and I look at him, and it occurs to me that I'm taking the life of a hero into my hands – a hero that I don't even know.

I ease the dagger out of his hand and get to work. Every once and a while, he cries out an unfamiliar name, or whispers mine.

--

I haven't slept in two days. The bartender made me move the boy to my house. The smell of blood and sickness was scaring customers away. That smell is filling my house now, steadily and surely melting into the furniture, while he sleeps on my bed. And he doesn't always sleep peacefully. He keeps me up, screaming, mostly. Sometimes he screams about fire, sometimes about pain, and sometimes about a man.

It's the man that interests me. I sit beside the boy when he cries out for the man I've never met. The man's name was Adre, I know, and when I whisper that name in the boy's ear he moans and sometimes he weeps in his sleep. In the few hours a day the boy is awake, he refuses to mention the dreams, or who Adre is. I'm sure Adre was a brother or something to that effect, maybe even a fellow hero who had fallen in battle.

"I know the name of your dead companion before I know yours," I say as I bring the boy his soup. I only allow him soup until his ribs heal.

"It would be unfair of me to not tell you my name, I suppose, since I'm sleeping in your house and eating your food," he mumbles, holding the warm bowl of soup to his stomach.

"Don't forget that you are also robbing me of my sleep."

"Not my fault."

"No, it's not." And we share a smile, something that, while becoming increasingly frequent, is still rare.

"My name is Jet."

"After the gem?"

"That's right." And then he falls silent, sipping uneasily at his soup. He keeps his eyes averted. It's a shame – they're such beautiful eyes, a clear and expansive blue, unlike my own murky brown. I've never seen a boy like him. He's almost alien.

"Cyril and Jet." I test the way the names sounded together. He glances at me, forcing a bitter laugh, but still he doesn't seem too displeased by the idea.

"I hope not to stay around for so long."

"Am I that hideous?"

"No." He throws me another one of his moody looks. He doesn't smile much, does he? What would it take?

"No?" I echo.

"You're a very strange man, but you're not ugly, Cyril."

"You say it so seriously."

"Maybe I have reason!"

"No need to shout."

"I'm not shouting!"

"Who is Adre?"

"Nobody you need to be concerned about."

"You cry for him in your sleep."

He turns his face away and says nothing more. Quietly, he turns his soup about with his spoon. It's snowing outside. From the bedroom window, you can see the cemetery. The graves are dusted in snow, looking like morbid little sugarcoated candies. A woman stands out there in her coat with a baby in her arms, but from this distance she looks vague and still as any other statue.

"He's buried out there, you know," Jet murmurs. "I haven't visited him for… oh… five years, now."

"Do you want to visit him?"

He smiles wistfully. "Not really. He's dead. There's no reason to visit a body."

"Isn't there?"

"A spirit doesn't stay with a body, Cyril." He looks at me. There's something profound in those eyes – perhaps it's the hurt in there making them black. "Souls float."

"I'm going to go see him, Jet. You're well enough to come with me, if you like."

"I'd rather not." He drinks the broth of his soup and hands me the bowl. "Take your time. And thank you."

I don't bother to ask what the thanks is for. I think I already know.

--

Adre Wilson

One young hero and one unlucky shot.

I know that Adre Wilson was killed in a bandit raid five years ago. The raid itself had been very short-lived and conducted by only a dozen weak men. They had gotten through two households before authorities could stop them, one of which had been the home of Jet and Adre Wilson. Jet killed them all, but for one who hid behind a bench and shot Adre through the heart as he ran to alert the authorities.

Jet had watched it all through the living room window.

"I should have known," Jet hisses into his hands. The tears haven't stopped for almost an hour now. "They never just come all at once. They stake all over the place. They always do. They _always_ do! And I just let him go… and I didn't even think…"

It's been a week. He's well enough to be on his way, really, but we've grown to appreciate each other's company. And, strangely enough, things have been relatively enemy-free all the way from Hook Coast to Oakvale. He doesn't have any place to go, or anything to do.

"I remember the last thing he said, you know," he seethes. "He said to me, 'I'm going to go get the guards. I'm glad you're alive.' Haha! 'I'm glad you're alive.' And then he dies."

"Who was Adre?" I ask him, touching his shoulder – just touching.

"I loved him so much." He laughs, but it's an ugly laugh. He scrubs at a tear with the heel of his palm. "So much. It was sickening. We went to… to be heroes… we were heroes together. And when we graduated, we just decided that we didn't care. And I was only nineteen, and he was only twenty, and we lived in this tiny fucking house in Oakvale. Can you picture that? Two of the best heroes in the whole academy, and they turned out to be a couple of queers living in a shack! Nobody wants a queer for a savior, do you see? Everyone knows queers can't fight! People respected me once he died. People _cared_ about me. But it didn't matter without him. Isn't that the way it works?" He hides his face in his hands, and in that moment I can see that the greatest of us are people, too. This man (no longer a boy, in my eyes) has killed balverines bare-handed, and still he cries, and he loves, and he sometimes gets hurt. Everyone hurts. Even heroes.

"Fuck…" He swipes away at his tears. He won't look at me. I don't blame him. "I understand if you don't want me in your house anymore."

"It's fine."

"I mean, it must be weird… you've got a queer in your bed…"

"Really. It's fine."

"Whatever." He keeps gazing out the window, like he expects something to be there, some sort of sign. Maybe he does see a sign. Maybe he sees Adre out there, smiling at him. "I only miss him when I sleep. We were only okay for half a year, before he died. And we slept together every night for half a year. Sometimes I wake up and I think he's really there, that he's just going to come back from the bathroom or the kitchen and come back to bed and everything will be okay."

We both start at the sound of a far-off thunderclap. Rain pitter-patters against the window, whispering dark secrets, kissing the pane and leaving wet little splotch-marks.

"Cyril?"

"Yeah?"

"Would you mind… would you mind staying with me, just for tonight?" And when he sees me staring he adds, "I don't like rain."

"The bed's too small for that," I say. Suddenly my sweater seems too warm.

"Then take me to the floor."

I clasp my hand to my heart. "Oh, _Jet_!"

"I don't mean _that_!" he cries, and now he's blushing, too, still rubbing tears away from his eyes, but now they're tears of embarrassment and frustration. "You _know_ that's not what I meant."

I'm laughing, but the sound is high and a little misplaced. "Alright. It's okay. Let me just set up so it's softer, okay?"

"Okay." He's reverted to staring at his feet. Alright.

Fifteen minutes, and I'm stuck lying awkwardly beside him, trying not to touch him, trying not to seem too afraid of him, trying not to seem forward. He lays curled on his right side, his face pressed into my shoulder, with one timid hand resting over my heart. The flesh underneath that hand is burning, and I know he can feel it.

"I'll leave in the morning," he mumbles.

"Please don't."

He doesn't answer, but there is a pair of lips against my exposed shoulder – and they're not there by accident. So we lay there together in silence, listening to the groan of rain against the roof, a broken hero and a makeshift doctor.

We can be each other's heroes, if we want to.

All through the night, Jet has no nightmares, and neither do I.


End file.
